Infrastructure Corruption in the Southern Cone

Infrastructure Corruption in the Southern Cone

Background

A client had put in what it expected to be a competitive bid for a major infrastructure project in a Southern Cone country and was surprised when the contract was awarded to someone else. We were called in to assess the country’s bidding process and the effectiveness of its anti-corruption protocols, so that the client could decide whether or not there was a basis for a legal action.

Action

We interviewed numerous business people with relevant in-country experience, as well as those who had worked on the design of the government system on bidding and its database. We assessed that the system was full of significant loopholes that allowed circumvention of the protocols it had publicly announced.